


Never His

by AlyxStar



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Anders' POV, Unrequited feelings abound
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-23
Updated: 2016-10-23
Packaged: 2018-08-24 02:57:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8354215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlyxStar/pseuds/AlyxStar
Summary: The clues are there from day one, he just never saw them.  Or maybe he did, but chose to ignore them?  Not that either changes things.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own a single part of DA2. If I did, you'd be able to punch quite a few people during the events of the game, wouldn't have repetitive caves, and there would be a lot more dragons, because dragons. Also, you'd be able to kiss the LIs a lot more, like you can in DA:I.
> 
> Please note: This fic is NOT Anders friendly, read no further than this note if you're unhappy with that. I like him, I really do, but not with ladyHawke and certainly not with how he behaves if you're in a relationship with Fenris.

If he were to look back on his travels with Hawke and try to pinpoint all the times she let him know she wasn't interested, without outright  _saying_ it, he'd say it was the night Fenris made that grand, bloody appearance.  But Justice is not fond of him lying, and the spirit's vehement opposition to untruths leaks through to him, so...  No.  It was even earlier than that.

* * *

The boost Justice grants to his Mana drains quick and without warning after the last shove of healing into the boy's shattered hips.  Anders staggers, scattering linens and soiled bandages alike as he fumbles for support before his knees give out on him, wilting against the wall as the familiar chill of Mana strain creeps through his bones.  He'll be feeling  _that_ in the morning.  The boy's father tries to thank him, comes over to him with a clinking pouch but he waves the man away.  He never accepts payment for his healing.  Coin is not needed, typically.  The neighbours are kind enough to share their food and he goes foraging for supplies regularly enough -

Armour.  There is armour clanking just outside his clinic doors.  He hears it over the woman speaking through her tears, and the boy's chatter, would usher them to safety if there was any but there is no back door.  No place to retreat.  Only flimsy privacy afforded by curtains that have seen far better days, and maybe protection from errant weapons if a table is overturned.  The hinges creak - he never gets them oiled for  _that_ very reason, offering a moment's warning - and the clanking enters his sanctuary.

 _Templars_.

Justice flares in his veins again, a heavy presence trapped in his skull, angry as bloated storm clouds, thunderous and echoing the heartbeat making his head ache.  He grabs up his staff and turns to face certain doom with magic already cupped in his hand and ready to be thrown - he will not go down without a fight, they will not take him alive!  Magic answers magic, and the focal stone of the  _other Mage's staff_ glows the red of fresh blood as a spell crashes from ceiling to floor in one impenetrable barrier.  He blinks several times, rendered mute and momentarily thoughtless at the very odd sight greeting him.  Two humans and a dwarf.  The woman's hand is thrown ahead of her, fingers splayed wide to keep her barrier in place, eyes flicking briefly from him to the family he'd just spared from tragedy and when she deems him the only threat, her attention is back on him.  The man shoulders his way to stand just ahead of her, not  _directly_ in front of her and blocking her sight - he's worked with her for long enough to know Mages typically needed a clear shot at targets, then - and he's slowly reaching for the ridiculously large sword strapped to his back when Anders notices the dwarf has a  _crossbow_ trained on him.

He laughs.  Hysterically.

_My mind has snapped._

The two humans stare at him, and he can see the resemblance in their eyes.  Not the colour of them, but the shape, and the almost identical frowns they wear.

" _Before_ you decide to try and blow us up, we're only here for some information."

"And maybe a quick healing spell -"

"For the love of - we are  _not_ healing your body of something it can mend in a few days on its own.  If it's bothering you so much, grow a pair and fucking strap it."

"Did the Warden-Commander send you?  I'm not going back - they made me get rid of my cat."  That... earns him stares again.  So not Wardens, and not messengers either, and he'd just confirmed he  _was_ a Warden, and they could send word back about his location.   _Shit_.  Granted it probably wouldn't reach Amell since she'd vanished into thin air and taken the assassin with her, but she'd left others behind to oversee recruitment and training during her absence.

Perhaps most chilling of all: what if they contacted  _Velanna?_

"Uhh.  No, nothing like that."  The barrier drops.  She lowers her hand.  He sets his staff against the wall again and the atmosphere clears up nice and peachy, even if the big bloke's face scrunches like someone had forced a sour lemon into his mouth.  "We're actually here about a set of maps.  Warden maps.  Of the Deep Roads.  We have it on good authority that they're in your possession."  It's  _his_ turn to scowl, especially at the dwarf when he starts poking around at the instruments left aside when he'd realised the boy didn't have time to be knocked out and cut open for gentler magic.  Quite without his conscious decision he's reaching out to smack the dwarf's knuckles and shoo him away but the damage is already done, he'll need to sterilise the equipment again.

 _Tea_.  He needed tea.  Might settle his nerves a bit, and a biscuit would help with the Mana strain.  A little.

"I hope you didn't pay your source.  Their information is a bunch of nug shit.  I don't have any Deep Roads maps, and even if I did you wouldn't be able to drag me back down there.  I'd sooner run starkers through the Gallows and spit fireballs from my dick."  He bustles around for tea leaves, and some elfroot for good measure, and that one intact cup he keeps misplacing, so he misses the absolutely  _disgusted_ look that stamps itself onto the man's face, the dawning mix of horrified amusement for the woman, but he definitely hears the dwarf's laughter.  He almost -  _almost_ \- smiles, because laughter means he hasn't entirely lost his silver tongue, but these folks are wanting to drag him to the Deep Roads and the  _song_ and the bone-searing compulsion to  **dig** with his own bare hands until he works them to the bloody bone, and then keep digging.

"As... lovely... as that mental image is, we were only interested in the maps for a... business venture.  We're mistaken, so we won't intrude on your - ah - duties, any longer.  Good day, serah."

He snorts, because he can, waves a hand in casual dismissal because  _why_ _not_ , and even wheels around armed with a pot of half boiled water to slam the door behind them for good measure when his eyes alight on the Mage's staff again.  For some reason it draws him up short, and he looks again to her companions and the rather impressive muscles the man's sporting, the confident-but-not-cocky stride he has, and short stubby fingers twirling an arrow between them with practised ease.

 _Close the door Anders_.  He keeps it open.

"Wait."

_Bollocks. **What** am I doing?_

"... I do have the maps, but I won't give them to you for nothing.  I... have a friend.  We're due to meet at the Chantry tonight.  If you help me get him safe passage to the docks, I'll personally see you to whatever blighted entrance you want to those infested undergrounds."

By some miracle she agrees, as do her companions.  Even though that soured expression of the family member worsens when he shakes her hand.  He knows he doesn't need to  _say_ Karl's a Mage for her to get it, it's there in her eyes when she tips her head up to look at him, offers him a grim smile and a firm grip at odds with her being a woman.

* * *

He can't get smashed out of his face drunk anymore, the fusion with Justice prevents it, but enough pisswater brew from the Hanged Man can still make him fuzzy around the edges.  Add to that that he's already numb and can still see phantom blood - Karl's blood - under his fingernails and smeared over fingertips scrubbed vicious and raw, it really isn't a surprise that he tries to tumble somebody into one of the rented rooms.  People did some stupid shit in the middle of grief, right?  It was forgivable,  _right?_ But Hawke - he's pretty sure he's heard that name before... somewhere - turns him down with a polite smile and a pat on his cheek.  Finds some excuse to remove herself from the table and relocate to one of the free stools at the bar.

He wakes up the following morning in an unfamiliar bed and  _thankfully_ alone, save for the disapproving weight of his resident spirit, rank fuzz on his tongue, and painful memories he would trade his Mana for in a heartbeat if it meant he'd be rid of them.  Oh, and the same damn dwarf from the day before, all bright toothy smiles and too loud words and a plate of lukewarm potatoes that have been half mashed and a...  _questionable_ stew that smells as bad as his breath tastes.

"So, blondie.  Lemme tell you why we need those maps and, preferably, the services of a healer as skilled as you."

* * *

His second clue is in the way she hesitates in the Alienage with dead bodies scattered around her and leans heavily enough on her staff that it aggravates the healer in him.  He'd literally just  _mended_ her calf muscle and the idiot went and got it sliced open again.  Not a fatal injury, for sure, she would survive the length of time it took for his Mana to regenerate enough to throw a flimsy healing spell at her, to patch it up enough to get her home, but... he's not so sure  _moving_ is a good idea with those skittish eyes darting between them and a dead heart practically steaming at the elf's feet where he's discarded it.  It's  _there_ in the way her spine snaps straight when the elf talks, a deep rumble that's pleasing even to his ears, the curve of one side of her mouth as she throws back a casual remark that has her brother looking at her like she's gone mad and Varric chortling away where he searches the bodies for coin.

But  _handsome_ _?_ Anders doesn't see it.

* * *

The third is actually a smattering of blows to his pride after Isabela and Merrill have joined the band of merry misfits and Hawke has taken it upon herself to help out at his clinic.  As much for the freedom to use her magic as to learn the  _art_ behind healing more than the scrapes earned by farm work accidents.  He broaches the subject carefully, slowly, teasing back the layers of her history first to catch wind of any previous... suitors.  She laughs awkwardly, tells him anyway of that one mishap behind the hay bales in the barn, of swearing her sister to secrecy under threat of burning her pigtails clean off, of being too mortified to ever even try kissing the boy again.  Still, for all that she talks about it, she puts physical distance between them for a couple of weeks after the conversation... not that he actually  _notices_.

_Or did he see it, but just ignore it?_

He tries again months later, when his heart doesn't ache  _quite_ so much with Karl's death and instead something warm and fluttery starts making a fuss whenever she pops in for her weekly lessons armed with a basket of fruit she buys at the market with the few coins she sets aside for herself from the expedition funding, and some of leftovers from her mother's dinners (even with poor quality ingredients, Leandra Hawke was clearly a cook to respect).  Hawke is a nice presence to be around,  _soothing_ , her obvious affront at the abuse of Mages in Kirkwall a balm even for Justice, the spirit calm and quiet whenever she is nearby.  Flaring bright in her defence in battle and the first of them both to send spells her way whenever she called for help - though such instances were few and far between.  She  _understands_ and she wants to fight back against the Templars as much as he does, and she  _celebrates_ her magic as the gift it is, quick to crouch down by the beggar children in Darktown and hand over some silver she really can't afford to part with on such a tight deadline.  Selfless, kind,  _fierce_ , merciless in the face of oppression.  She  **intrigues** him, and maybe it wouldn't be so bad to spend more than just friendly conversation with her, but when he leans in for a kiss at the end of a particularly good day - no deaths, no major injuries, time to actually sit down and  _rest_ his body for more than a couple of minutes - she turns from him and his lips touch her cheek instead.  He withdraws, she apologies, and he bids her a good night.  They do not speak of it again.

* * *

His fourth, fifth, and sixth clues are all linked.  They are all separate from each other, but the common denominator is a constant thorn in his side, and not just because it keeps Hawke from  _seeing_ him: Fenris.  He honestly cannot wrap his head around any redeeming quality the elf  _might_ possess for her eyes to go soft in that way they do when she thinks nobody is looking, or in the way he is the first she goes to after a fight to check for injuries and offer medical aid if he has a poorly placed wound in need of treatment, or in the way she hears of his aversion to magic and makes a conscious effort to weave her spells around him in curves most Mages struggle to comprehend never mind properly execute.  Honestly, when they're out hunting for the blighted Ironbark and the Darkspawn launch an ambush, he  _does_ secretly hope the elf might perish in the skirmish.  Nearly even gets his wish when an Ogre attempts charging him, too, but no.  That's the fifth clue - Hawke very nearly kills herself by hurling every ounce of Mana still left in her to halt the Ogre in its tracks.  She doesn't succeed, only slows it down, but it's a long enough delay for the ungrateful bastard to scramble over the boulders fencing him in on either side and for her to collapse with absolutely no warning.   _Then_ the Deep Roads and the easy laughter she has around the elf that he never hears in his clinic, or even in the Hanged Man when Isabela deals out an extra helping of humorous and ribald jokes, the night watches they share together and the quiet conversations between them that he  _can't_ hear clearly where he huddles stiff as a board in his bedroll, but can still tell there is  _something_ between them, slowly growing.  He is jealous, of  _course_ he is jealous, and would love nothing more than to sweep between them and stomp over that budding _thing_ with flaming boots, but he wholeheartedly believes Hawke will wake with clear eyes one day and realise the elf isn't at all what he makes out to be.  That she'll realise he's a threat and shouldn't be trusted, quick to throw Mages to the mercy of Templars and sing the praises of the Gallows.  Hawke isn't a daft woman - she'll see.

* * *

She doesn't.  Even when her heart lies in tatters at her feet, so plain as day that the bastard might as well have set off the lyrium and plucked it from her chest like he did to that woman in the caves, she doesn't see.  There is a strain between them, a mutual avoidance, but even though he has trampled over her and thrown her affections back to her like some petulant child, her gaze does not turn to Anders.  Not once.  Not in the way he would like for it to.  Oh she smiles at him, jokes with him and - when sufficiently drunk - dances around the tables and chairs in the Hanged Man with him a few times before Isabela or Merrill or, later, Sebastian steal her away for a card game or more drinks.  Even spends the night at his clinic on occasion, but nothing ever happens.  They remain solely friends, and it's a rusty knife thrust in his gut whenever she smiles at him, but turns to Fenris and he has to watch it  _dim_ and go bittersweet.  He is patient though, even when Varric in his blunt but caring way, drops unsubtle hints that he should move on from "pining" after someone he can't have.

* * *

 

She bleeds after the fight for Kirkwall.  Fenris all but breaks down the clinic door in his haste, shifts back to corporeal form long enough to gently lower Hawke to the table and grip its edge to keep from keeling over.  He might have found his obvious sickness amusing, but Hawke is bleeding, so much that she's already pale as knife-chipped bone and barely conscious.  Under _much_ more favourable circumstances he would take the time to peel off her clothing piece by piece and tease every inch of skin left bare, but it is with desperate fingers that he rips at her useless leathers and bares her top half to grasp the extent of the damage.  So much  _blood_ , his hands slippery with it before he's even fully pouring his Mana into the gaping wound in her abdomen.  So much _torn inside_ and the  _pain_ , Hawke too weak to do more than twitch weakly under his healing and moan pitifully as he forces organs and muscle and skin to regenerate and stitch back together, going so still and silent sometime during that for a moment he panics she's passed to the Maker's side until her next weak breath, when he begs Justice for help to minimise the scarring and the chance of infection.  He saves her, somehow, against the odds.  It leaves him trembling and cold, and then there is Fenris dragging one of the chairs over for him to slump into, dropping a threadbare blanket over his shoulders and of  _course_ it would be worry for  _her_ that would unite them, however temporarily.

When fever takes her, a danger in its own right and perhaps even more deadly than the Arishok she had bested only hours prior, it is not  _his_ name she croaks with a voice scratchy and nearly silent.   _Fenris_ she calls in her delirium, and  _Fenris_ is the one who takes her hand and smooths back hair stuck to her forehead, and  _Fenris_ is the one who trades his own blanket for the one damp with her sweat and stained with blood.  Days later when Anders deems her safe from death's immediate clutches, it is  _Fenris_ who carries her through the basement entrance near his clinic and ghosts through the estate until she is tucked safely into her own bed.  It is  _Fenris_ who stays behind to help Orana care for her, the once timid servant shooing Anders from the property with steel words and a stern look when he would much prefer to stay over and keep watch,  _just in case_.  It is  _Fenris_ she wakes up to,  _Fenris_ she speaks with first,  _Fenris_ who helps her through the exercises meant to slowly rebuild the strength her body expended along with his magic to keep her alive.

It is Fenris she returns to, as slowly and as carefully as she goes with her recovery.

* * *

His third to last clue breaks what little resolve he has left to  _wait_.  Shatters the  _hope_ he still holds close, closer than Justice is buried under his skin, and any illusions that there  _might_ still be  _something_.  It's nothing major, not a spectacular declaration of love (not the Fenris will ever be the type to say that word to her, coward that he is) or a burst of magic to guard his back against a rogue sneaking by his guard.  No, it's something much simpler, and within Kirkwall's borders.  He means to visit her to check on a shoulder injury, a venom laced spider bite to be exact, when he stumbles upon them in the small garden she's made in the courtyard to grow herbs and the flowers Orana is fond of.  The single tree there - a stubborn old thing that survived the slavers and the reclamation - has already shed its apples and is in the process of doing the same with its leaves.  Hawke's toes - her feet as bare as the elf's - brush the orange and red carpet nature so graciously provides, and from them Anders' gaze travels upwards to the blanket she has thrown around her shoulders and shares with  _him_ , face tucked into the crook of his neck but not enough to shield her  _smile_ , content in a way it has never been with anyone else, and... Fenris is smiling, too.  His eyes are closed but Anders suspects it  _would_ actually reach them, brighten them somewhat, and only because they are so wrapped up in each other does he remain undiscovered, unintentional intruder to what isn't strictly a private moment.  Brown fingers settle on her cheek, thumb following the bold lines of the tattoo she has etched over her right cheekbone, and it's the nuzzle that snaps him, white hair - longer than Fenris has allowed it to grow in years - spilling down to play in her black waves as lips press to her head and she curls up closer under the blanket.  Anders retreats, and swears that he is  _done_ with this shit.  He has lost her, even when she wasn't his to start with.

* * *

Then she falls pregnant and for all that it is  _too much for him_ and he's a burning mass of jealousy and hatred both inside, Hawke is  _still_ his friend and he is  _still_ a healer and so he prepares tonics for her to take for her body to absorb and put to use, lend magical resistance to the baby until it is born and she can use her magic properly to ward it from the weakest parts of the Veil in the thrice-damned city and the demons who mash their faces up against that invisible barrier like eager mabari pups... albeit a thousand lifetimes  _worse_.

That's his second to last clue, well and truly driven home when she's exhausted in her chambers just over eight months later, carefully propped up by pillows and her own tenacity, Fenris by her side with one arm about her shoulders and the other at her front, deft fingers easing the blanket away from his daughter's face so he might look at her better.  Anders stays only long enough to ensure mother and baby are happy and healthy, leaving well before the glimmer of tears dampens dark lashes and startles little Liarana from sleep, the others that follows chased away by Hawke's hand.

He has lost her.  Hope is lost.

* * *

His final clue - if he can even call it that considering she has never given him a  _chance_ , and she has a  _child_ now, with someone who is not him - presents itself with the expected note of finality aboard Isabela's ship.  They have somehow cleared Kirkwall without incident from the remaining Templars, they have survived the thing Meredith turned into, they are  _free_ , and nothing has tasted more like ash in Anders' mouth than this triumph he has fought for for so long.  Hawke looks at him as though he is a stranger, with  judgement and ice in her eyes in a way he's never had directed at him, the last to see it none other than  _Danarius_ when she'd held him in place with Force magic long enough for Fenris to end him.  She spits words at him, advancing on him with all the danger of an enraged mother, finger jabbing into his chest with every curse and every accusation until he is trapped between her and the cabin.  She only spared him so he could help heal those they stumbled across who were injured by the falling debris from the Chantry, the same debris that had compromised the safety of her family home.  The same home that would have come down on top of her daughter had Fenris not travelled through solid walls with the unnatural abilities and speed granted to him by the lyrium brands to pluck her from harm's way.

Some distant part of him, locked away under the Vengeance he's cloaked himself in, is sorry for that, and grateful that even her servants had survived the estate's collapse, aboard the ship and well, if a bit shaken.

But he is not the Anders he once was, she has never been his, so these things are left unacknowledged and unsaid.  She draws herself up to her full height - and despite the fact he is taller in height her  _presence_ is more than he can ever hope his to be - and it is not  _Amelie_ Hawke who speaks next.  Hawke, the Champion of Kirkwall, declares that the very _moment_  Isabela drops anchor at the nearest port, he will get off the ship.  Hawke, the Champion of Kirkwall, declares that if she even so much as catches wind of him being near Kirkwall, she will hunt him down and she will kill him.  Hawke, the Champion of Kirkwall, withdraws all protection she had previously, unconsciously, afforded him and with it his safety from one wrathful Prince of Starkhaven.

* * *

He lives long enough to disembark, short eight friends, with little coin to his name and a twisted spirit still locked up somewhere in his head.

He does not cross paths with her again.

For she was never his in the first place.

**Author's Note:**

> Pronunciation of Hawkebaby Liarana's name: Lie-ah-ran-ah
> 
> And for anyone curious the eight friends Anders is short are as follows: Hawke, Varania, Carver, Merrill, Isabela, Aveline, Varric, Sebastian.


End file.
